


The Frozen King

by kaeorin



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Hypothermia, Reader-Insert, Slice of Life, Winter, frozen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 02:05:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17909918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: Thorin falls into a half-frozen river and you have to help warm him.





	The Frozen King

You’d had nightmares like this.

The company had stopped for the night, and you were setting up camp. The fire was roaring merrily. It provided extra light and some well-needed extra heat. Thorin had begrudgingly stopped a bit early today, after an endless afternoon of complaining from Kili about the bitter wind. Dwarves were bustling about the campsite doing something or other, filling the space with a cheerful sort of busyness. A few of the others had set out towards the nearby river in hopes of catching a few fish to supplement the rather-meager portions that you were set to have for dinner. 

Out of nowhere, the sky split with a thunderous _crack_. It reverberated through the mountains that surrounded you, and yet...it sounded very close. It was followed immediately by loud voices shouting. The dwarves. The river. The ice. You dropped your pack and straightened immediately, straining your ears for any clues as to what had happened. It didn’t make sense, the dread that the sounds had filled you with, but your stomach was suddenly filled with lead.

Only moments later, Ori had come bursting through the undergrowth. His eyes were wild as he shouted at Bombur: “Build up the fire! Thorin’s fallen in the river! He’ll freeze if you don’t! Build it up!”

For a moment, your body suddenly felt as if you were the one frozen. You couldn’t help but imagine Thorin beneath the icy waters, slowly going numb even as the roaring current dragged him miles down the river. You felt sick. Hopeless. There was no way anyone could survive that. 

Thankfully, that very thought rekindled your own fire. Adrenaline shot through your limbs, and you moved to action before you really knew what you were going to do. Towels. And blankets. When the others got back from the river, they were going to need towels to dry off with, and blankets to wrap up in. You pulled all of yours out of your bag and spread them out as close to the fire as you could without actually burning them up. Then you set about digging them out of the others’ bags. The slightest, quickest little pang of guilt stabbed through you as you pawed through everyone’s personal belongings, but you told yourself that it was necessary. They wouldn’t mind. Or else they’d have to get over it. Bombur and Balin were piling wood onto the fire, but you all moved around each other as though in a choreographed dance, as though you’d practiced this. 

By the time you’d finished, the campsite was strewn with fabric. But no one else had come back from the river. You stood stockstill for a moment, looking at the place where Ori had first arrived as though you could simply force someone to appear by sheer stubbornness. The seconds ticked by. You were wasting time. 

Rocks. You could heat some rocks, maybe. Gather some large, flat stones and place them at the fire’s edge, so that the others could wrap them in their clothes or their blankets and boost their body heat that way? It seemed like a good idea, and anyway, it was definitely better than standing and waiting. You had made several trips out into the surrounding trees and back to the fire again before you finally heard the sound of bodies trudging through the undergrowth. You looked up. There they were: soaked and frozen through, but everyone upright and looking more alive than dead. Fili and Kili flanked Thorin, supporting him. Dwalin and Gloin followed close behind, looking as though pure rage was the only thing that kept them moving forward. Everyone was silent, except for the occasional audible shudder.

“Change into dry clothes first,” you barked, without really thinking about it. Something about the frozen stillness in the air allowed your voice to carry across the campsite, sounding much more certain and authoritative than you actually felt. “Dry your beards and your hair as much as you can, then put something dry on your heads to keep the heat in.” Any other evening, you might have expected some resistance if you tried to take charge like this, or at least some teasing from the dwarves about an authoritative woman, but tonight they barely even gave you a sideways glance. The dwarves stripped more or less right where they stood, abandoning their half-frozen clothing in favor of their spares, which you had tried to spread out close to the fire. You knew that right now they couldn’t give half a rat’s ass about whether you saw, but your own silly modesty flustered you anyway. You kept your eyes fixed on the ground even as you made a round through the campsite, checking in on the others and offering help wherever you could.

Fili and Kili had made quick work of their uncle’s clothing, and had settled him upon the log that you’d scooted closest to the fire. Still clad in their own soaked apparel, they were working towels through Thorin’s hair and beard. You took Kili’s from him and pushed him away with your own body.

“You’ve got to take care of yourself before you can help him,” you snapped, trying to wring out any last bits of water from Thorin’s beard. “What do you think he’ll say if he warms up and sees you fools frozen solid?” They had to have gone into the water after him, and probably not too long after. You met Fili’s eyes over Thorin’s head. He looked miserable. “There’s still some warm towels over there. Please at _least_ change into dry clothes.” You braced for an argument. You wouldn’t have blamed them for it, either: you knew what family meant to them. But all the same, you couldn’t let them neglect themselves. Everyone else had dried and dressed, and you could see even from a distance that their clothing had frozen stiff around them. 

Kili nodded and stepped away without a word. You watched him for a moment, mostly to make sure that he made it safely to his clothing, but then turned your attention back to Fili. He was still rubbing Thorin’s hair vigorously with the towel. Could you force him to leave? He met your eyes again, but there was a surprising lack of challenge there. 

“We’ll take care of him, Fili,” you said gently, and gestured with your chin. Balin had come up behind him, perhaps drawn by the same line of thinking as you had been. “Please take care of yourself. I really don’t want to face down his wrath for helping save him but letting you freeze.” You offered a cautious smile. Fili’s face was still blank, but he did finally exhale slowly and relinquish his towel to Balin. As he passed you, he rested his hand on your shoulder for a moment, and even through your clothing, you could feel how cold his skin was. A chill crept into your body, but this was unrelated to the weather. So many of the dwarves were so cold, and the sun was going down. It was only going to get colder. 

Thorin was shivering. There was something unnerving about that, even beyond the fact that he fell into the river and could have bloody _died_. The rational side of your brain knew that shivering was good—it meant his body was working to warm itself up again, after all, and that was a good sign. But he was _Thorin_. He was regal and fearsome. Hypothermia should have taken a single look at him and turned and run away. 

You must have been rubbing his beard too fiercely, because after a while, he grunted and moved as though to bat you away. It pulled you out of your own head for a moment. “Sorry,” you mumbled, and lifted his hands so he could take the towel himself. “Here, can you do this yourself for a moment? I need to get something.”

Thorin moved slowly, sluggishly, but he did eventually begin drying himself. Another good sign. You tucked it away for now, cautious against getting too optimistic too soon, and went over to the fire. You stooped to pick up one of the middling-sized stones that you’d placed near the flames. It was warm, approaching hot, but not painful to hold onto. You smiled despite yourself. It had worked.

“There are stones around the fire,” you called out to the dwarves who had hunkered down in blankets and extra clothing. “The ones in the embers here? They should help too. Put them in your blankets, or in your laps, just don’t let them touch your skin or burn you.” You grabbed a couple more and went back to your spot. Balin’s face looked grim, but determined. He nodded at you as you knelt in front of Thorin. 

You started to untuck the wrappings that Fili and Kili had wound around their uncle, but he growled at you. No words, just...a growl. You did your best to ignore the way the sound deepened the chill of dread that was inside you. “I know you’re cold. It’s only for a minute. Please let me do this.”

It wasn’t much warmer inside the blankets than it was outside. It was like the king’s body had shut off, stopped producing any warmth whatsoever. Still, you had to keep working. You shoved a stone under each of his arms and pressed one against his chest, then wrapped him up again. It seemed to appease him for now. You just hoped it would help.

“Warm...” Thorin murmured. “Rocks?”

You didn’t like that he wasn’t using complete sentences, but this was still better than base growling. You nodded, and combed your fingers through his beard to see how dry it was getting. “Stone, ah...holds on to heat. I put a bunch of them near the fire so anyone who got wet could try to use it to get warm.”

“...Clever.” 

Because he was using so few words at a time, it was hard to tell whether he was speaking clearly. In any case, he certainly wasn’t yet back to normal, so you did your best to brush off that little rush of warmth that his word had caused. It didn’t mean anything. He was freezing, maybe to death. 

“Take this, lass.” Bombur’s voice came from above, and rescued you from dropping into that pit of uncertainty. You looked up. He gestured at the two of you with two steaming mugs, which you accepted. “Warm you both from the inside out.”

Thorin reached to take his mug from you, and you heard dull thumps as the hot stones dropped from under his arms. You set your own mug on the ground so you could retrieve them. “You’ve got to be careful,” you warned. “I don’t know how else to keep these in place, so you can’t lift your arms like that. At least not for now.” You took Thorin’s mug out of his hands so you could tuck them back into the blanket. “Here, I’ll do that for now, okay?” It was a little awkward, working out just the right angle to tilt the mug so he could drink, and how quickly to tip it so it wouldn’t spill past his lips and burn him, but you were always a quick study.

There was something...heady about the process. You’d never spent this much time looking at his mouth before. In fact, you’d never spent this much time this close to him before. In general, you kept your distance. He had so many other things to worry about on this journey that you didn’t dare add one more thing—worrying about you—to the pile. Anyway, was it just your imagination, or was there a bluish cast to his lips? Quickly, you forced down any of those strange, silly flutters and double-checked his blankets. 

You fell into a quiet vigil, then. Thorin didn’t say much else, and you tended to withdraw into yourself when you were nervous, so the two of you merely sat there in silence broken only by Thorin’s sips from the clumsily-offered mug. Only when he finished his tea did you remember your own, sitting on the ground beside the log. Ah, well. It was cold now. Wasn’t going to do anyone much good now, but you took several large sips of it anyway. It would be wrong to dump it out, and you weren’t sure you wanted to explain yourself to Bombur anyway. 

By the time the stew was finished, Thorin’s face was much closer to normal. His lips weren’t quite as blue anymore, and his eyes weren’t nearly as glazed. But he was still shivering. When Balin brought him his dinner, he very nearly dumped it in his lap. 

“I can do it,” you offered. Balin started shaking his head even before you finished speaking.

“You’ve got to eat too. You can’t fuss over everyone else all night long.” He settled himself on the log beside Thorin and stirred the bowl. It smelled good, and it _had_ been a long time since breakfast. 

“Don’t need anyone fussing,” Thorin grumbled. A complete sentence, more or less.You tried not to smile as you pulled yourself to your feet to get your own serving of supper. Balin responded, but his words didn’t quite carry to your ears. You took one more look at the two of them. Whatever he’d said must have worked, because Thorin was begrudgingly allowing Balin to feed him. You filed the image away in the back of your mind. Probably this situation would never feel quite right to joke about, but...it was a funny mental image, anyway.

You ate quickly, and hardly even really tasted dinner. You wanted to check on all the dwarves, especially the ones who had come back wet. They were probably mostly out of danger, but it was still a good idea to keep them moving, or at least to keep them warm. So, when you were finished eating, you took several of the heated stones out of the fire and went around the camp trading fresh ones for ones that might have cooled. If someone refused a fresh stone, or didn’t seem quite as tightly wrapped as he once had been, you hesitantly suggested that he get up and move, or challenge someone to spar. 

It didn’t take long before the camp was almost back to normal. Kili started it, really, by challenging Fili to wrestle. Not long after that, other dwarves shed their wrappings to get up and lend one of the brothers a hand, which inevitably led to several other wrestling matches starting up alongside them. You edged closer to the fire, away from their antics and tried not to laugh as you watched. The atmosphere of the camp still wasn’t quite right, but...it was something. You pulled your jacket tighter around your body. It was cold. Not nearly as cold as, say, falling through ice into the river or going in after someone who had, of course, but you still cupped your hands around the last heated stone and held it close. 

“Are you cold?”

Thorin’s voice startled you, making you drop your stone. It hit the ground and bounced straight into the fire. Damn. How could you possibly have forgotten that he was so close? You looked up. He was still wrapped in several layers of blankets, but he didn’t appear to be shivering as badly as he’d been earlier in the day. Small comforts.

You managed a smile. “Not nearly as cold as you, I think. Would you like some more tea? I think there’s still some hot water...” 

He shifted, then, and for a minute you thought he might stand up and leave. But it was worse. He was trying to unwind one of the blankets from around his shoulders. Without thinking, you all but flew to his side and put your hand on his to still them. “Stop! We’re still trying to get you warm, Thorin. What are you doing?”

He allowed you to stop him from moving, though he did _not_ allow you to push his arms back into his lap. He also wouldn’t look at you. “You’re cold. You need one of these.”

“I promise you, sir, I don’t. Do you feel like those stones are doing anything? Are they still warm? Could I check? If they’re not helping, we can get rid of them.” It was very odd, touching him now that he wasn’t in quite so much immediate danger of freezing to death, but you still felt like you needed to. 

“Leave the stones! Take the blanket. I kept you from your tea, and you nearly let me keep you from supper, but I’ll be damned if you go cold tonight.” The fire in his voice was almost enough to reassure you that he’d be fine, but his eyes were just wild enough to keep you from being certain. He pushed your hands away, and his touch was rough. 

You took a step backwards. The two of you didn’t spend much time together, but sometimes you rode near the front with him, and you chatted. Neither of you were particularly wordy, and he didn’t like to share anything too personal, but he did share, now and again. But he’d never spoken to you like that before. And he’d certainly never touched you like that. 

“With all due respect, sir,” you began, “I’m not the one who fell in the river and nearly froze to death.” Near the end of your sentence, your eyes began to sting, a telltale sign that the tears weren’t far behind. Imagine, letting Thorin Oakenshield see you crying at the thought of losing him. You drew in a breath and tried to harden your face. “If you don’t keep that stupid blanket, I’ll go and throw myself in whatever Thorin-shaped hole you left in the ice on the river, don’t think I won’t.”

Slowly, almost painfully, Thorin pulled himself to his feet. His height wasn’t particularly intimidating, but the look on his face certainly was. He took several steps forward until he was solidly within your personal space, and unwound the topmost layer of blanket. “It’s going around you or it’s going into the fire,” he said through gritted teeth. “Make your choice.”

“Whoa, hey, Uncle!” Fili swooped in just in time. Although Thorin wouldn’t allow him to take the blanket, Fili did close his fingers around it, so he at least stood a chance of keeping Thorin from actually flinging it into the flames. “Uncle. I think that’s Nori’s blanket, there, and he wouldn’t take kindly to...you know...losing it over this.”

“Tell that to _her_.” Thorin’s face was dark, but you could just make out the grim determination in his features. Without even looking, you knew that it was similar to the expression on your own face. Fili cast a quick, pleading look your way, but you shook your head. There was no way that you were going to relent and take the warmth from Thorin. His arm twitched, as though he longed to hurl the blanket into the flames, but Fili kept him steady. 

“A compromise, then.” Fili kept his voice steady, like he was trying to soothe a wild animal. Something about that prickled your pride, but you held your tongue. “What if you both use it? We can wrap it around the both of you—actually, we can wrap all of those blankets around the both of you. That way, Uncle, you can make her warm without burning Nori’s things to a crisp and you—” He caught your eyes. “You can keep this stubborn fool warm with your body heat instead of by making him yell at you all night.”

Your first instinct was to turn him down. What Fili was proposing wasn’t appropriate—and, quite frankly, it was ridiculous. But you had to admit that he had a point. Regardless of his condition, Thorin was very much the type to spend the rest of the night raging or sulking instead of just bloody getting better. If he agreed to this, it might be a decent way to make sure he didn’t get worse overnight. But that was a pretty big ‘if’. You crossed your arms in front of yourself. “I’ll do it. If he will.”

Thorin was silent just long enough to make you worry that he was really going to refuse. He jerked away from Fili and eased himself back down onto the log. Heat rose into your cheeks. You shouldn’t have agreed so quickly. Now you ran the risk of looking overeager, when really you were just trying to keep him alive through the night. Just as you were about to duck your head and find somewhere else to be, Thorin grumbled something that sounded like an agreement. Fili seemed about as surprised as you felt, but both of you knew better than to make a big deal out of it. 

Thorin lifted an arm in invitation, spreading the blankets out to make room for you. Well. What else was there to do except sit? So...you sat. At first, you tried not to sit too close, tried not to let your thighs press up against Thorin’s. It was plain to see that he didn’t really want to do this. But Fili took it upon himself to help tuck the blankets more securely around you, and in doing so, nudged you closer. After a few more moments of playing the dutiful nephews, the boys went back to their own places before the fire and left the two of you alone.

It wasn’t nearly as warm under the blankets as it should have been, but it was, at least, warmer than the night air. Still, you kept your arms crossed over your middle and tried to focus more on forcing your body to produce more heat than on the way Thorin felt beside you. There wasn’t really enough space beneath the blankets for you to keep from touching him, but you kept your body tense and taut, lest you look like you were throwing yourself at him.

The others were still sparring. Fili and Kili joined them again, and it wasn’t long before they started to look a bit more like their old selves. Some of the others play-fought with a viciousness that made you cringe, but there was a noticeable tenderness in the way Fili threw Kili to the ground. Both of them laughed as their antics turned into wrestling, and then into trying to rub the other’s face in the mud. You found yourself smiling without meaning to.

Thorin shifted beside you and made a sound like he was clearing his throat. “I won’t bite,” he said, so low that you nearly missed his words altogether. You turned your face towards him, and just barely managed not to recoil when you realized how close he was. This was highly inappropriate.

“What do you mean?” You let your eyes linger on him for too long. He was getting some color back in his cheeks—they still weren’t bright or rosy or even an overly-lifelike color, but he wasn’t corpselike anymore. His lips were back to normal, though: that same dusty, muted rose, with no hint of the bluish cast from before. Heat rose into your own cheeks at the realization of what you were doing, and the fact that he could see you. Feeling sheepish, you let your gaze skitter away, fixing it on the fire. That was probably safe.

He didn’t answer for some time. Soon, though, you felt him shifting again, and then you nearly flinched right off of the log when you felt him press his hand against your back. “That.” His voice was gruff. “You’re sitting at attention. Relax.”

“This is how I always sit,” you insisted even as your muscles ached in protest. 

“That is not how you sit when you’re riding next to me. Or eating supper. Or writing in that journal before you go to sleep.” As he spoke, his words grew somehow more clipped, as though he didn’t actually want to be speaking them out loud but wasn’t sure how to stop. 

He’d watched you. At least three times, though probably more than that, if he’d gotten a sense of your posture. The moment he was describing were not overly private or intimate, but...they were personal. For a moment, your gut instinct was to feel uncomfortable, which was no surprise—you were always uncomfortable around Thorin. But he’d seen you. He’d been looking.

He had yet to move his hand. It still wasn’t warm, but there was something about the touch that was reassuring. When was the last time you’d been touched by anyone? And here you were, with more or less the perfect excuse to initiate a bit of physical contact. 

Though it went against nearly every one of your instincts, you let your legs relax against his instead of keeping them quite so tense. Rather than holding yourself perfectly upright, you leaned into him slightly. He hesitated for a moment—you could feel the indecision in his muscles—and then let his arm curl around your back. This morning, you’d thought he didn’t even care to look at you, but now, tonight, he was holding you?

One of the stones had fallen between you. You closed your fingers around it and lifted it off of the log. It wasn’t hot to the touch anymore, but as you held it, a certain warmth spread through your hand. You placed it on Thorin’s leg and let your hand rest on top of it, not quite willing to give up the little bit of heat it provided you.

“That really was clever, the stones,” he said. “Quick thinking. How did you know to do it?”

You shrugged. “I didn’t. I was just waiting for everyone to come back from the lake and I didn’t know what else to do. It was...an experiment, I guess. Better than standing around and waiting to see...” You let yourself trail off there: the situation was still a little too close, a little too dangerous, for you to feel comfortable telling anyone that you were waiting to see whether everyone would come back. 

“Waiting to see.” He repeated your words, but with an added air of finality, as though he were finishing your sentence for you. “You may have saved lives tonight. We won’t forget that.” Was it your imagination, or did he tighten his arm around you for just a moment? You leaned into him, just a little, just in case you had imagined things, but he seemed unbothered. Alright, then. You released a long, slow breath and stared into the fire.

Slowly, a gentle warmth began to grow between you.


End file.
